What to buy, suggestions anyone

[Shawn]

As you may know Ive parted with my beloved 14er, withdrawal was both sudden and severe..I will have some funds left when the smoke clears, Ive bought a EQ6Pro from Bintel, Now After procuring a 450D Body I only have 1500 left... I'm all ears for any recommendations...

:)

[gbeal]

Yehaaaa, he is still with us, good news.
I'm sure you will get all sorts of suggestions, but mine is possibly an ED80 style refractor, or a newt of some description, maybe an 8" f4, OR both.
Gary

[Shawn]

Thankyou Gary, I hope to get lots of suggestions, Portability is important to me this time, so the EQ6 is the most I can physically manage.. Yes a modest start for scopes, in the near future I can always upgrade...:)

[gbeal]

Yep, and for portability the 80mm refractor is a great option. This, combined with a longer/bigger newt gives very good bang for buck. 80mm for wide stuff, newt for smaller DSO's. Both cheap to acquire and while they are no R/C imaging machine, they will do most that you want.
Get a good image capture program to go with the Canon, something like Maxim DSLR or Images Plus or whatever, and away you go.
Gary

[Shawn]

I want to avoid exposed to atmosphere mirrors, the trouble I had to go to protect the 14ers coatings up here.. the Obs was sealed with dehudifier running 24/7 .. are any of these larger cheaper 6" refractors any chop or is the CA unacceptable for semi serious imaging... I was thinking along the lines of a couple of small WO,s if this is the case..that is if the larger cheaper refractors are crap. . Im open to any suggestion really,

[Shawn]

Got all the s/ware I need Gary.. IP , DSLR, SNPro. Im keeping all that..;)

[gbeal]

Um, hadn't considered the mirror exposed angle, so if you have to then hang in there with the refractor. I have a used 80mm apo triplet, and while it isn't much chop for galaxies, it is a very forgiving.
Start small/insignificant and go from there. Phil has an ED80 in the For/Sales.
With respect to the bigger achros, I can't really say, but suspect the old axiom exists, you get what you pay for. Can't hurt to try it though, I have been thinking of this myself.
Gary

[Shawn]

I would be interested from folk that use the bigger Achro,s Gary, as you know due to eyesight issues I don't do visual. and for the most part CA can be minimized digitally after the fact, however there is that other old adage..

You cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear...:D.

Anyone elaborate on this...

[Wavytone]

$1500... an Orion 102ED f/7 will fit on that nicely, and you'll have change for a couple of cheap ultrawide eyepieces from Bintel and a camera adapter. I have the same scope and it is nice. Very sharp. And 70% more light gathering power over the 80mm.

[Bassnut]

Oh dear Shawn, a mighty 14" to what, wide field ? puke :eyepop:.

No disrespect to WWs (widefield wooses), but thats a huge down grade :D.

You may find the WW experience somewhat dissapointing, and you know Im right, deep down ;).

Keep the the apature/FL dream alive, whatever your choice :thumbsup:.

[Shawn]

Thanks Wavy and Bass.. It going to be a shock for sure Ill miss the deep stuff..I have thousands of images to play with in the interim. I figure that an EQ6 can handle maybe a 6" APO ..Ive been good all year and Santa must know that.... But im still keen on feedback on the cheaper Achro,s..for imaging ...

[h0ughy]

with the exchange rate the 127ED APO's from china may still be a good bet, will take all of th 1500 though? maybe the ed80 triplet and a 80mm shorttube refractor as a guide scope?

[Lester]

Hi Shawn, looks to me like you are waiting for someone with a 6" Achro to talk you into it. As you are going to be using the scope for imaging and not viewing, my 5cents worth is get a good refractor eg APO and for go some aperture to get good images right across the field of view.

[Shawn]

Houghy and Lester, yes I think your right...bite the bullet on a bigger APO, maybe go over budget, but dont tell the war office...

[Shawn]

Read between the lines there Lester, cheers.. I see overtime in my future...

[acropolite]

ED80 and an 8 inch newt OTA and Baader coma corrector. You can image through either using the other for guiding. Before the $AU collapsed you could reasonably expect to buy all 3 for around $1100

[multiweb]

Got a second hand ED80 and a Newtonian 5". All up I spent $600.00 for both. Nothing wrong with them. I still get cool pictures (now and then) :lol: The MPCC will set you back around $300.00.

[bluescope]

Bintel have these options Shawn ... haven't checked anyone else for price comparisons but this seems quite reasonable.

Orion Premium ED 102mm f/7 Refractor $1,299

Orion ShortTube 80mm Refractor $369

Pretty close to your budget !

:thumbsup:

[Shawn]

This pretty much what Ive settled on, I thank you all for your suggestions...

Shawn

...

[Wavytone]

Mine has exceeded my expectations, you will love it. I can see why people get addicted to these short refractors.

[AlexN]

I have a WO 102 F/7 and its lovely, The orion looks to me to be the same scope re-badged..

With regards to the 6" F/8 achro. I had one, I sold it. Spew. It would be a waste of time to image with it, the correction was horrible, massive CA issues.. cheapo focuser was rather useless...

The 102mm APO + guide scope should keep you happy for a while.. And by happy, i mean, crying in your milk that you sold a 14" SCT, but glad to be out imaging "happy" :D

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Shawn,

may be too late but you could get an 8" newt SW reflector from Andrews (OTA only) for $399 and then whack a SW ProED100 refractor on it (FPL53 glass) for only $1199.

You get the finder, rings, case etc with the ProED and its now better glass than before.

Not sure about the F9 focal ratio though if this makes it too narrow for AP?

But then again, the 200mm newt is an F5 so maybe use that instead for fairly wide field shots?

Cheers

Chris

[AlexN]

200mm F/5 scope has a Narrower field of view than a 100 F/9. The 200 F/5 is faster, but narrower.. (100 F/9 = 900mm focal length, 200 F/5 = 1000mm focal length)

That said, A good point, a relatively cheap newtonian reflector + a decent quality APO is a great trade off.. you get a moderate narrow field from a 8" F/5 or F/6 newt, and a wide field from a ED80, and use them for alternating tasks of guiding and imaging depending on the target.

[gregbradley]

To get really good images you don't necessarily need massive aperture for APO imaging. There are literally thousands of excellent images on the net from 106mm and smaller scopes.

The term APO gets thrown around in the marketing world. For practical purposes APO is really a triplet or quadruplet (like the Tak FSQ or TV NP101). Doublets vary from highend semi APO like Tak FS series to lower end semiAPO. Then you go lower from there. I have not seen decent images from Achros and would advise you see actual good images before you buy.
More likely you would get images where the stars have heavy blue halos around them or worse.

There seems to be a lot of choice in the 102mm bracket now and it is heavily competitive. I haven't used one but I would be interested in the Stellarvue 102mm or the Orion Eon 102mm. The Orion EON is made by Pern Lang (spelling) from Taiwan. Most known for the scopes it made for William Optics so these EONs should look familiar.

Also others would know better than me, but there is a 127mm triplet being used by I believe Hughy which may be pretty nice. Aperture rules ultimately but not at the cost of out of focus semi-APO optics.

14 inch SCT with super long focal length is great for visual but really that sort of focal length requires a high end mount to make it work. You will be severely limited by the mount and I have rarely seen people get on top of it although there have been exceptions.

Long focal imaging is an upper step best done after mastering shorter focal length imaging which is less demanding and more likely to result in an excellent image.

The choice in this price and aperture range has really opened up in the last few years so you are lucky.

I'd also have my doubts (others could correct me) about an EQ6 handling a 6 inch APO. Same problem. Imaging starts with the mount. A poor mount with an AP scope on it will produce lousy images!

Greg.

[gregbradley]

I had a William Optics 80mm triplet. I didn't like it. It had bad coma (collimation wasn't even vaguely accurate thanks to crappy rotatable focuser poorly machined). Focuser lock didn't work, visual back was too large with only 2 screws meaning cameras would pivot slightly. 5 out of 10 mate.

It looked good though. It was better once I fixed it up myself but then I paid for someone else to do their job and they didn't.

Greg.